1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, an information processing method, and a program thereof, which are suitably applied in searching for desired data from plural data.
2. Description of Related Art
In the past, in personal computers being information processing apparatuses, various data are stored and managed as files under folders which are layered logical storage locations built up in a hard disk drive. Most of such personal computers are provided with the Graphical User Interface (GUI) that displays respective folders and files on a display as icons so as to enable the user to operate the icons displayed on the display using a mouse, making it easy to operate the folders (for example, selecting, copying, deleting folders, etc.) as well as to operate the files (for example, selecting, copying, deleting files, etc.).
On the other hand, depending on the storage capacity, personal computers which can store several million files or more are expected to be provided with a GUI that can make the user easily search for a desired file (or data) from among such many files.
In recent years, for example, there is suggested an information processing apparatus that is provided with a GUI that can make the operation of searching for an icon corresponding to a desired file from among a plurality of icons more intuitive and comprehensible by superposing and displaying icons indicative of the contents of files (for example, in case of image files, images thereof) like pages of a book, and spreading and displaying an icon corresponding to a desired file from among thus superposed and displayed icons by the operation of flipping a page (for example, Jpn. Pat. Appln. Laid-Open Publication No. 4-316125, FIG. 7 to FIG. 14).